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I'm not sure that reading about this will be as funny as seeing it, but I have to post this as I still find myself laughing about it sometimes.Last class one of the techniques we did started out with a wrist grab and nage doing a tenkan extending uke forward, and then as uke turns to continue the attack nage does a strike to the face and enters under their arm and does a cutting motion to bring uke down and in towards nage. Well when it was my partner's turn to be nage she managed the first part well enough but when she stepped under my arm and went to cut down she bumped into me slightly and then fell over, all of a sudden she was there just sitting on the mat. A good thing she's a close friend of mine because I started laughing and just couldn't stop. It took me a couple of minutes to get myself under control. Now I've thrown a nage once or twice when they've really lost the technique but I think this is the first time one has just fallen over.

Kat

I find the aquisition of knowledge to be relatively easy, it is the application that is so difficult.

I performed an 'uchikaitennage' when my opponent did his forward roll I stepped on his ... hair. After a strange noise and a loud aaauch! I realised what I did. Lifting my foot revealed a bit of his 'front' hair!

I have long hair too, and last week, my instructor was demonstrating a hole in a pin, and how to close it. I was on the ground, his knees on either side of my shoulder and he said, "She can get up from here..." I tried to get up to illustrate his point, but couldn't move my head. Me: "I can't, Sensei." Him, looking down at me: "Yes you can. Just roll away." Me: "No, Sensei, I can't. Not when you're kneeling on my hair." Everyone laughed.

... I guess you had to be there.

Sarah

Out of clutter, find simplicity.
From discord, find harmony.
In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.
-Albert Einstein

So, we were doing ni-nin randori and one of the two uke got a nice shiny bokken to play with. I was paired up with two yudansha -- I must have been 2kyu by then -- and we started.

I ended up being tori first, then the unarmed uke.

When my turn to have to bokken arrived, tori decided that taking the bokken away from me was a good idea. He then would ``drop'' the bokken in an awkward possition. It gave him time to breath while I ran, picked it up and attacked. Now, this was going over time after two hours of class and we were all shattered!

Towards the end of the two minutes, I picked the bokken and realised that tori had just thrown his first uke and was getting ready for me. So I charge, bokken above my head, screaming my best ki-ay! todate. Tori froze. I taped him on the head and said ``you're dead''. The whole class errupted into laughter. Sensei called it a night after that.

"I have long hair too, and last week, my instructor was demonstrating a hole in a pin, and how to close it. I was on the ground, his knees on either side of my shoulder and he said, "She can get up from here..." I tried to get up to illustrate his point, but couldn't move my head. Me: "I can't, Sensei." Him, looking down at me: "Yes you can. Just roll away." Me: "No, Sensei, I can't. Not when you're kneeling on my hair." Everyone laughed."

That is very funny!

This thread is great!

Its these moments in the dojo that make it all worth while. Its all about fun.

"flows like water, reflects like a mirror, and responds like an echo." Chaung-tse

When we first started awhile back, we had those real cheap mats over carpet. The mats were super lightweight with "handles", kind of like handles on a purse or bag.

While we were doing ukemi, one of the students stepped on this handle and did a forward roll. His foot got caught up in the handle, and the mat wrapped him up like a burrito! It was so funny to see him rolled into that mat!!!

It was really funny when it happened. I still laugh when I remember that.

One time I came to class having eaten a caserole with too much onions and garlic. When I was training with one of my friends, as he attacked me as uke, I burped in his face. He literally fell down, dizzy. My best atemi ever!

Last edited by Anders Bjonback : 02-08-2004 at 05:54 PM.

"For peace and happiness are presences, not objects we can grasp and hold onto."
--Lilian Smith

Once, a couple weeks ago, Sensei had shown us a technique we had not done before (or at least I didn't remember it). Anyways, with each new nage, Sensei would attack us first.

On my turn, he attacked and I didn't quite get it right. He pointed out something for me to correct and so I tried. Next attack, I go to throw him and WHAM! Down on the ground he goes like a freakin' rock!

I just KNEW I had hurt him or did something wrong. The look of shock on my face and the others nearby was hilarious (looking back on it). I asked sensei,"Oh my god... what happened? Are you alright? Did I do something wrong?" Meanwhile... he had rolled out of it, laughing the whole time, walking away shaking his head and saying "No... no! That was good! Do it again!"

Me (a mudansha) and a yudansha were warming up during a break in a seminar and just doing a little Jiyu Waza to warm up (the mat was empty as people were still returning from lunch).

Well, as one can guess, we sped it up a bit and as I delivered a shomen strike, the yudansha switched from one throw to another where I would roll out over him. He changed a bit too slowly and I wound up bowling him and myself over into one big pile of gi and hakama. We laughed for quite awhile while entertaining various stares.

That could be a version of aiki otoshi or maybe ganseki otoshi (if you had them up high, like over your shoulders)

Sorry, dude...nothin' new under the sun

Bronson

"A pacifist is not really a pacifist if he is unable to make a choice between violence and non-violence. A true pacifist is able to kill or maim in the blink of an eye, but at the moment of impending destruction of the enemy he chooses non-violence."

We have a new student who holds a fourth dan in karate, but at our classes wears white belt. As we were doing rolls sensei attacked everyone as we came out of the last roll. As my friend came up the sensei attacked him with a shomen ... and missed a spinning elbow in the head. Very funny, no injuries

We had a young student (around age 12) who was the designated "what if???" student. During any technique he had a what if question, usually some complex situation, involving several attackers, handcuffs, machine guns, etc..... His standard question for tanto tori was " What if it's a double edged knife?" sometimes adding " What if it has spikes on the handle like in the Stallone movie Cobra?" The best one of all came during a session of grappling. The Sensei was showing how to use the gi to off balance or choke or something like that when the young man asked " What if they're naked?" Myself being around 18-20 at the time, and a bit of a smart ass, replied " If you're getting attacked by naked people, you're in the wrong place!"

This is a fresh one. Yesterday we had a sensei visiting us at our dojo. He had to leave before the end of our practice. We don't have desiganted changing rooms, just a big hall where we have our mats in the middle and chairs and tables along the walls. Incidently, we had quite a few new comers training, who were not familiar with the ethiquette of bowing.

So, as one of our regular senseis said 'Now let's thank Sensei for coming here tonight' , everybody turned round to face him (only in boxer shorts by then) ... and started applauding. Noone could hear the voices of tudents and sensei behind what sounded like a massive ovation (there is a lot of echo in the hall) trying to tell them to just bow. Well, the Sensei kept serious face a bowed in responce.

When I was in Sensei Jim Wallace's Seidokan class back in the '80s, I bought a bokken at a Jade East store in Utica, NY. The first time I bought it to class, afterwards, in the Y's locker room, Sensei Jim asked me if I'd oiled it.

"Oiled it?" I asked. "No." And I thought: Oiled it!? Who said anything about oiling it?

"Yeah," Jim said, holding it up and sighting down the back of it, "if you don't oil them, they tend to--" Then he lowered it and smiled at me. "Never mind!"

Yep, that's right, my bokken is a cheap peice of junk with a lovely warp in it.

Fast foward to 2004, and a kid in the dojo I just joined said, "Nice swords."

I know of a rather clumsy fellow in my dojo, he was demonstrating a technique with my sensei, and when he was thrown, he tripped over the sensei's hakama, bringing both of them to the floor

The student, needless to say, was embarrassed.

This has happened to me, but on a lesser scale, finding someone had stepped on my gi sleeve, preventing me to get up. He did not realize it, and was waiting for me to get up to start the technique again

We have a student that's still in the recently-post-pubescent spiderlike stage of development - arms and legs everywhere. With a hakama on he bears a rather startling resemblance to a featherduster.
He's also darned near double-jointed; which makes some techniques rather odd when he's uke. I remember once practicing with him; I was performing katate kosa-tori kokyunage. It was working - sort of - but with those arms going off in all directions I wasn't getting the drop required for an effective finish. The resulting technique was hilarious - as he came around and his arms came up; I caught them; folded him up like a jointed ruler and then dropped him. Not much to read; but it looked funny as hell.

Lately I asked sensei about the functional meaning of hakama and he told me that's just a tradition. But later I discovered that in reality it's a very powerful weapon in the hands (or should I say on the legs) of a skilled aikidoka. My partner trapped me with his hakama while I was thrown !!!
He tryed to convince me that was done accidentally! But all right, I know he was practicing some secret technique !